No fly holiday in Europe

[Namechangeforthis88]

Any bright ideas? Train ideally but open to ferry. We like a city break to somewhere with an old town we can wander round, no doubt a handsome castle, cathedral etc. Good art gallery wouldn't go amiss.

I'd love Lisbon but I think that's going to take too long and cost too much for us right now. Waiting to hear back from operators on that. Just been looking at Vienna, promising but I feel like there could be some really interesting cities that we're not thinking of.

Open to making two centre or having a stop off to break the journey.

How long would you be going for? A weekend, week or 2 weeks makes a massive difference in how far is reasonable to travel. And whats a rough budget?

Meant to say, Barcelona is spot on but that means we've been there three times already, so not Barcelona.

9 days including travel. Thinking around £2,000 for 2 adults and a child.

Pref £2,000 to include travel and accommodation but not necessarily meals etc. If we can do it for less that eould be incredibly welcome!

Avignon? We had a lovely 10 days there just pre pandemic, all by train. Alternatively Bologna or Innsbruck were both good destinations and straightforward to reach by rail.

Getting to Italy by train is less straightforward at the moment - a landslide a few months ago has shut down the Paris - Milan route until spring 2024. Annoyingly.

is Paris too obvious by Eurostar?
Budapest is really interesting but might be too far by train.
Sticking in the UK, have you been to Edinburgh?

All of France is easy. Plenty of castles and nice towns in Brittany, Rhône-Alpes and Province. You'll be fine in any of them, so then just pick based on temperature and mountains or sea. Any further afield and you'll spend the whole of your holiday and possibly your budget on the train. Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland are probably out of budget. German & Belgian trains are horribly unreliable, but there are lots of nice towns on the Rhine or Schwarzwald areas that are accessible by train.

We had a great time in the Netherlands this summer. It was hot!
spent a week in a Landal site nr Gouda (there are many) and then 3 days at Efteling which was just amazing.
we took the car and the overnight ferry.

For a multi stop trip, you can combine any of Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Munich, Zürich, Budapest and Bratislava easily with the train. They're all nice places, for a few days. It's just a matter of getting that far southeast first.

Cologne or Brussels?

How about Santander by car ferry? Brittany Ferries go from Plymouth. Then you’ve got all of Northern Spain and Southern France to play with. The ferry is a long one, so make it part of the holiday, late afternoon departure, dinner, overnight then dock about lunchtime next day. A few years ago we did this and stayed just over the border in France near Biarritz, then drove north, had a few days near Bordeaux which is also lovely, a week on the Ile Ré and then home Caen - Portsmouth.

Heidelberg could fit the bill for you. Easy connection from Paris to either Karlsruhe or Mannheim and then on to Heidelberg on the S-Bahn. Combine it with time in Paris to bump up the art gallery count.

Loads of great ideas, thank you! We do like a fairly walkable city.

@NotFastButFurious Edinburgh is exactly the kind of place we'd love, so much so, we live here! Paris-wise, no nothing is too obvious, I just find Paris a bit massive and sprawling.

@MotherOfCatBoy is Santander a nice city to mooch around?

This could keep us going for years. @StamppotAndGravy I like your thinking that we should just draw the line somewhere and say after we need to re-visit with more time and money.

Also where you're starting from. It's all very well saying 'all of France is easy' if the Eurostar is a short, cheap, train ride away. Not so much if you're in northern England, Scotland, or probably Wales or the West country and to even get to London is going to take many hours and cost hundreds of pounds.

I agree that the Santander ferry gives you northern Spain (San Sebastian, Bilbao and the south of France as an option - lots to see and do).

Beware how long it can take. Dh was looking at training from where we live to uk and it was 23hrs. It’s a 2hr flight

Baring that in mind I wouldn’t go too far for a 9 day trip as you will spend half on a train. Maybe London to Brussels, down to Antwerp, then Paris and back?

When are you intending to travel?

From March next year there's a sleeper all the way from Brussels to Prague! Before then and you have to change at Berlin.

https://www.seat61.com/Czech.htm#london-to-prague-using-the-brussels-berlin-sleeper

Or, stay in Paris for a night or two and then go on to Prague.

https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Paris.htm#Paris-Prague

Or do each way a different route!

Man in seat 61 is the place for ideas.

LOL to Edinburgh!!
I'm wondering about somewhere in Germany, maybe follow the Rhine from Frankfurt to Strasbourg (yes, I know that's France!) with stops at a couple of towns along the way? (9 days in one city sounds like a long time to me)

@BarbaraofSeville @Caspianberg starting point Edinburgh, we just need to bite the bullet on getting to South of England, possibly visit London family. I don't mind a long train journey, so long as it's vaguely in proportion with the time spent at destination., and we can afford it.

Yeah it won't be 9 days in one city, we do blast through a city's main attractions, but I'm allowing at least one day each end for travel. If we don't do a silly journey we can do at least two centres I reckon.

Not been there myself, but my friend swears by Palma in Majorca…fits the bill for what you’re after!

Have you considered flying one direction and then train back?

Fly for example Edinburgh to Düsseldorf. The train Düsseldorf to Cologne, Cologne down to Luxembourg, then up to Brussels, then London, then north to Edinburgh?

Train tickets aren’t cheap though. Our friend used to always fly Edinburgh to London as it was about £60 flight and £250-300 each to fly. So be aware as budget of £2000 can go quickly even just on uk trains down and back

This was in 2017 so quite a while ago now but we took train to Paris and then Paris to Milan. We went to Bologna, sorento, Capri, Pisa, Rome and Milan all via train and boat.

I also did Dover to cologne via over night coach and then train to Hamburg, train from Hamburg to Copenhagen with daytrip to Malmö

Bruges, Lyon (two centre trip)